


iceberg

by transzoemurphy



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Blood, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Deaf Character, Dysphoria, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Graphic Suicide, Homophobia, Lowercase, M/M, Past Sexual Abuse, Self Harm, Suicide Attempt, Trans Male Character, Trans Moritz, Transphobia, conversion therapy, dont read this if it’ll trigger u im serious, graphic descriptions of self harm, i just wrote it bc it helps me cope w intrusive thoughts jhdhfjfes, in the short term not the long term but WHATEVer., take care of yourself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 10:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18408881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transzoemurphy/pseuds/transzoemurphy
Summary: “moritz was sixteen when he died.granted, he only died for a minute or so before coming back alive, at least that’s what the paramedics said. but he still died.his dad had found out he was bi and trans when he read through moritz’s diary and found one of the sappier and more explicit poems detailing one of many ‘lovemaking sessions’ with melchior and one describing in detail what it was like to be trans in an unloving home.from there it had been a few phone calls and one highly uncomfortable conversation and moritz was at god’s promise conversion camp.”// based off the movie adaptation of “the miseducation of cameron post”





	iceberg

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all. if anything in the tags is going to trigger you, i’m begging you to click out, get a drink of water, and find something fluffy. it’ll get better.
> 
> but. if u want to read it but need to skip the most triggering parts for suicide/self harm: skip from “and moritz holds on for one more day” to the scene where moritz is in the hospital, which starts at “and one of the paramedics (or the nurses? someone? some doctor person)” so. there’s still a lot of talk of suicide n etc but it’s not graphic.
> 
> if you need to skip the part about csa: all the mentions of csa are in martha’s poem, which is in italics.
> 
> there’s also two mentions of physical abuse, and descriptions of conversion therapy, misgendering, & homophobia. please please please stay safe.

 

 

moritz was sixteen when he died.

granted, he only died for a minute or so before coming back alive, at least that’s what the paramedics said. but he still died.

his dad had found out he was bi and trans when he read through moritz’s diary and found one of the sappier and more explicit poems detailing one of many ‘lovemaking sessions’ with melchior and one describing in detail what it was like to be trans in an unloving home.

from there it had been a few phone calls and one highly uncomfortable conversation and moritz was at god’s promise conversion camp.

his bag had been searched. they’d gone through his phone — moritz had learned from hanschen how to “erase” things only to get them back when it was convenient, so there was nothing incriminating on his phone, only some remaining “hey did u do the math hw i didnt get it” texts from otto and some bible verses from melchior, who had sent them ironically, of course, but no one needed to know that. his music, of which he only had a few songs, had been renamed to various worship songs. after some contemplation, they’d let him keep his headphones. he could only hear a little bit out of one ear, anyway, was the logic there.

they’d confiscated his comfort sweater, on the basis that it was “too masculine,” and his antidepressants, as antidepressants would “interfere with god’s plan for his life.”

his roommates’ name was martha, an anxious girl who stuttered through almost every word she tried to speak. she was deaf as well, and therefore an interpreter was already present at the establishment.

the first month was unbearable. he hated every second of sit-stand-pray-kneel-pray-stand-sing-sit-listen-pray-stand-sing-pray. pretending to be disgusted with himself, and then not pretending. feeling like every inch of his body was wrong. he’d gotten there and the staff immediately forced him to shave his arms and legs to become “more ladylike,” as that was “god’s plan” for him. to moritz, it sounded a lot more like “the _leaders_ ’ plan” for him.

girls wore skirts or ‘feminine’ pants. boys wore shorts or ‘masculine’ jeans. girls must not wear sports bras. boys must not wear their hair long. if a female has short hair, “she” will grow it out.

moritz had nearly perfected the art of almost passing. between the binder melchior had bought him and the masculine jeans he wore, he managed to diminish the size of his hips and chest. the haircut had helped, also, as well as not shaving. except he got to god’s promise conversion camp and he had to wear a nice black skirt with white leggings and a blue top. his chest was quite visible despite his lying to the staff and saying he wore a smaller bra size than he did. he was required to shave every day and on sundays he was to wash his face with a moisturizer to make it soft and feminine.

in the morning: twenty minutes max in the shower. ten minutes max drying off. ten minutes max dressing.

in the afternoon: ten minutes max in the shower. ten minutes max drying off. five minutes max dressing.

in the night: thirty minutes max in the shower. fifteen minutes max drying off. ten minutes max dressing.

his roommate, martha, with her two braids and her green nightgown, hadn’t gone to sleep at 10pm, lights-out time. she was sitting on her bed, desperately scrawling something down in her journal.

moritz knew what he was going to do, but he didn’t want martha to be awake for it. he didn’t want her to witness this.

so he sat down on her bed. “what are you doing?” he asked out loud, signing as well, because “god gave you a voice for a reason and you are to use it to communicate.”

“writing,” martha said and signed.

“can i… read it? you can say no.”

“…sure, fine,” martha sighed, curling up in her blanket.

_i am seven years old and my father finds me in the bathtub with my friend samantha. we have gotten muddy because we were in the mud_

_samantha dries off and leaves and my father finds me in my room and he says “this is how a daddy loves his daughter”_

_and the next forty minutes are e x c r u c i a t i n g ._

_it’s the next day and samantha wants to come over and my father says “no, it’s not proper for two girls to bathe together”_

_and then he says “let me teach you what is proper”_

_and i am eleven years old and my teachers have told us to never have sex and i go home and my father says “this is how a daddy loves his daughter”_

_and i say “at school they said this is wrong”_

_and my father says “your school is wrong. you’re beautiful. the lord doesn’t mind.”_

_and i say “but they told me it was wrong.”_

_that was the first time my father beat me_

_and now i am seventeen years old and all i wanted was to love my girlfriend_

_and my father said “this is how a daddy loves his daughter”_

_and he sent me here to die, to rot away, one cell after another until i am a corpse on which worms and fungi feed_

_i am seventeen years old and i have been raped more times than i can even remember_

_i am seventeen years old and i think that something here is wrong. i don’t think everything is right here_

_but i am nine years old and i cry out as my father_

_and he claps a hand over my mouth and says_

_“this will be worth it, isn’t it good, i love you”_

_iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou_

_but it didn’t feel like he loved me when i aborted his child (our child?) and he beat me_

“honey,” moritz said, and he repeated it in asl. “i’m sorry. i’m so sorry.”

“it’s okay,” martha said, and then she started to cry, and moritz held out his arms, and the two of them sob together on martha’s bed.

and moritz holds on for one more day.

one more day until he snaps in group therapy and the leader grabs him by the neck because “he needs to calm down” and that night he goes into the bathroom, he takes his clothes off and pulls on the only pair of jeans he’s been allowed and stands there in the bathroom in his jeans and a bra and feels so fucking wrong.

he takes the razor from its place on the counter and the clock says 11:52pm so martha will be sleeping and he fills up the bathtub with water and steps in it and it’s either too hot or too cold, he can’t tell.

he fumbles with the razor until the blades come out and drift to the bottom of the tub. he reaches down, collects the four blades in his hands, and stares down at his thighs.

 _go big or go home_ , he thinks, and then he giggles, and it’s so fucked up but he can’t stop laughing.

and he drags one of the blades across his thighs and watches the blood bubble up and eventually he doesn’t even feel it anymore, doesn’t feel how much it hurts. the water is cold, he’s realised.

one thigh, then the other, and the bath water is darker now, and then he leans back against the wall of the tub and across

across

down his wrist.

thirteen on each wrist and then he digs the blade as deep as he can in one spot at the top of his left wrist and slices down to his elbow and it hurts so fucking bad but he does the same on the other wrist and then he closes his eyes and slips down and he hopes he dies.

…he doesn’t die forever.

he woke up in the hospital and his body stung and there’s bandages over every part of his thighs and arms and even his stomach — he didn’t remember ever cutting himself on his stomach, so what the hell?

and one of the paramedics (or the nurses? someone? some doctor person) said something and he tried to say “i’m deaf” but he’s deaf and couldn’t hear himself speak, but the noise gets the doctor’s attention and she turned to him and said something and now there were four doctors around him and it was too bright.

one of the nurses said something again and moritz lifted his left hand and pointed to his ear.

“you’re deaf?” one of the nurses asked slowly, over-exaggerating her facial expression.

moritz nodded and the nurse turned and said something to someone and a few minutes later there was a man with a lanyard reading “interpreter” and he waved to moritz. “hi, my name is mark.”

“hi.”

“what’s your name, kid?”

moritz blinked up at the lights. “no.”

“you don’t want to say your name?”

“no. no no no no—”

“it’s okay,” mark signed. “how old are you?”

“sixteen.”

“when is your birthday?”

“20 april 2002. can i sit up?”

he turned to one of the nurses and she clicked a button and the seat rose up, so moritz was propped up in his seat, and for the first time he noticed the air tank hooked up to a tube in his nose.

“do you know why you’re here?”

“i tried to kill myself.”

mark nodded. “can you tell us why?”

“no.” he would never open up again. not if it ended like this.

mark nodded and wrote something down on his clipboard. “can i ask why you don’t want to say your name?”

“i don’t want… i don’t want my name ever again. i don’t want to hear it. i don’t want to see it. i don’t want to feel it.”

“why is that?” mark’s eyes were soft, questioning, caring.

“i want to go by a different name.”

“are you… are you transgender?”

moritz flipped out, his hands shaking in the air, trying to tell him to ask quietly. “i have been in conversion therapy and i don’t want to think about this.”

“i have a couple more medical questions, and then we can talk about something else, okay?”

“…fine.”

“what object did you use in your suicide attempt?”

“blade. from a…” he couldn’t remember the word. “shaving thing.”

“a razor?”

“yes.”

“was it clean?”

“yes.”

“have you attempted suicide before this?”

“kind of. i tried to shoot myself but the bullet missed completely.”

“have you been receiving treatment for your depression?”

“kind of. i was on antidepressants. they took them away. at the place.”

he wrote down something else. “how long were you there?”

“32 days.”

“would you like to receive a package of anti-scar gel for free that you can use to reduce the appearance of your scars? you’ve received twenty-eight stitches.”

“what? how much does it cost?”

“do you have insurance?”

“i don’t know.”

“it should cost about $40, but i’m paying it for you. capitalism is a trap.”

moritz laughed, a real laugh, the first one in so fucking long, and two of the nurses turned, concerned, but he was laughing. “capitalism is a trap,” he repeated. “you sound like my b—like melchior.”

“melchior? is melchior a friend of yours?”

“one could say that.” a friend who bought him a binder and who accepted him fully and smoked weed with him and kissed him delicately in his basement surrounded by lava lamps and melchior’s dog and then held him tenderly when they had sex for the first time and asked if it was okay seven times before he even had done more than first base.

“boyfriend?”

“we were boyfriends.”

“were?”

“i’m here. he’s not.”

“actually,” mark said. “a boy in the lobby has been pacing for about three hours now, saying, ‘i have to see him. i have to see him. i love him’ and demanding to know ‘where the fuck he is.’”

“can i see him?”

mark nodded reluctantly. “after this, yes.”

“fine.”

“what… what name is it you like to go by?”

“moritz,” he admitted.

“is that german?”

“yes. my mom was german.”

mark nodded. “my grandma is german. german’s a pretty language.” he coughed. “not that, uh, not that you can hear it.”

moritz laughed again. “yeah, well. i can hear a little bit. a tiny bit.”

“i have a few more questions,” mark said. the two of them had been getting off track an awful lot. “when you were at… the place… was there abuse of any kind?”

“they were teaching us to hate ourselves, so, yes.”

“a report will be filed. when you were there, did you engage in self-harming behaviours?”

“yes, but never like this.”

“this was a suicide attempt, yes?”

“yes.”

“was there abuse of any kind going on at home?”

“…yes.”

mark took a deep breath. “while we wait to get you out of the situation, do you think your melchior would allow you to stay with him?”

“uh, probably,” he said.

“what kind of abuse did you face at home?”

“physical. emotional. the usual.”

mark nodded. “when we call melchior in, would you like us to use the name moritz and male pronouns?”

moritz nodded. “please.”

mark turned to one of the nurses and said something.

“we’ll call him in. would you like to be alone with him?”

“yes, please.”

“okay,” mark said. “i’ll be back in two minutes, and then you and melchior can have ten minutes to yourselves.”

“okay.”

mark explained the conversation to one of the doctors, who took the clipboard and went into an office, turning on a computer before closing the door so it was only open a crack.

true to his word — or, one could say mark had _mark_ ed his word — melchior was there two minutes later, his eyes red and puffy, curls matted around his face, outfit crooked, his lips cracked and bleeding.

he still looked like an angel.

“melchior,” moritz breathed.

“moritz,” melchior responded in asl, running to his side and carefully sitting on the side of the bed, running his fingers along the tube in moritz’s nose and the bandages on his arms. “i love you. what the hell happened? you text me in a panic saying your dad knows and a month later you’re in the hospital looking like death itself?”

“my dad… was angry, about me. he sent me to conversion camp. i couldn’t deal with it there, so i tried to— yeah.”

“i’m sorry,” melchior breathed.

“is it okay if i stay at your house for an indeterminate amount of time?”

“absolutely. but babe. baby. how bad is—” he gestured to moritz and the bed he was lying on. “this? your injuries?”

“pretty terrible,” moritz admitted. “i was pretty fuckin’ determined to die. there’s bandages like… everywhere down to my knees.”

melchior leaned down and kissed moritz gently. “what can i do to help?”

moritz shrugged slowly. “uh, wait, no, can you tell one of the nurses my meds and my birth name? it was 200 milligrams of sertrailine.”

“i know, honey. i’ll tell them when they’re back. i just want to be with you.”

moritz moved closer to the oxygen tank. “lie down.”

melchior did, burying his head in moritz’s shoulder. “i’m never letting go of you. never again.”

“i’m deaf.”

melchior sat up and repeated his statement.

“i love you,” moritz said aloud, resting his fingertips on the front of his throat.

“i love you too,” melchior signed. “and i’m not letting you get hurt like this again. you can always talk to me, okay?”

“i know.” moritz pulled melcior down and the taller boy rested his head in moritz’s shoulder again.

moritz was sixteen when he died, sixteen when he was revived, but when melchior’s head rested on moritz’s shulder, it didn’t matter how old he was; it only mattered that he was happy.

**Author's Note:**

> hi, yeah. i just watched “the miseducation of cameron post” and i couldnt get this idea out of my head, so. here. if you made it this far, congratulations, you’re now Legally Obligated to go get a drink of water. self care babey! 
> 
> follow me on tumblr @trans-zoe-murphy


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